Posted by Robert Howes on September 04, 1999 at 17:07:13 from 62.137.38.6 via proxy webcacheH08a.cache.pol.co.uk:
In Reply to: Re: 'Racundra' posted by Tim Johns on August 31, 1999 at 10:22:14:
In AR and Captain Flint's Trunk, after we are told that Racundra Hit a reef and sank, Christina Hardyment goes on to say that:
"In April 1982, a long article on Racundra appeared in the magazine, Yachting World. It reported that she was in Santa Lucia in the West Indies, and was owned by a Rodney Fingleton. The boat photographed there certainly looks like the broad beamed Racundra in some ways, but she is Bermuda-rigged, and has a quite different cabin top and well from that shown in the origional drawings and early photographs of her. Could her hull have been salvaged? Perhaps like a cat with nine lives Racundra is still afloat."
When I first read these sentances, I dismissed them as wishful thinking, however, I have recently read Signalling From Mars - The Letters Of Arthur Ransome, and came across something rather interesting. On page 147, in the postscript of Ransomes letter to Adlard Coles, arranging the sale of Racundra and also asking that he never mention her name in print, Ransome writes:
"Of course if you were to resell the boat, I should have no sort of objection to your mentioning in advertisement or otherwise that she was the origional Racundra. Copies of her are I am told being built in Canda and South Africa."
This set me thinking, perhaps the boat that Rod Pickering bought in 1976 was not the origional Racundra, but one of the copies that were supposedly being built?
We shall probably never know, but I would like to hear someone else's suggestions.